Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Cerebus]

As C says, too many names for basically the same thing.
My view
1/ AC induction motor - Rotor field is alternating and driven by AC (sine or near sinewave) on the stator field
2/ BLDC et al - Rotor field is steady and driven by permanent magnets / DC via brushes etc OR special waveforms on field winding.

And I think to complete that you have to say that the rotor field in an induction motor is produced by electromagnetic induction from the stator (not from permanent magnets, nor from an externally supplied rotor current via brushes, slip rings or whatever). It's obvious, but it's worth stating explicitly because there's

3/ synchronous AC motor with rotor and stator windings, both externally excited.

[Robert763]

I did a bit more research.
An AC asyncronous induction motor will generate if the Slip is reversed, i.e. it's connected to a AC supply but is being turned faster than the syncronous speed for that supply frequency.
That is fine if it is putting a relatively small amount of power back into a power grid. To use for regeneration in a DC storage system is more interesting.
The Tesla S motor has a speed sensor disc on the shaft. I'm making assumptions here, but suggest that the controller uses the signal from this to generate a lower than current syncronous speed "excitiation" signal to the stator. Presumably this has a low amplitude and a lot of slip. Slip can be considered a phase shift between the excitiation and generated sinewaves. You can then use a syncronous (to rotor speed) rectifier to exract DC from the generated waveform without taking power from the excitiation. It seems 60 degrees of slip would be optimum for a 3 phase system.

So not as complex as I first thought but nowhere near as good a generator as a PM or "DC" rotor system.
Note car alternators are DC rotor systems and can be used as motors using BLDC type motor drives.

[Vince]

Got my Farnell order this morning.

Me now is equipped with coax cables and adapters. I call it my survival kit... will expand as needed, but at least now I have the basic stuff to play with my 37 scopes 5 counters and 3 generators.

I can now contemplate actually doing stuff with my TE, rather than just stare at it. This is a true revolution.

2022 is starting well.

Of course cost me an arm and a leg, 130 Euros. But well... at least I get lots of useful stuff for my money, it's an investment, and I am now empowered....

- x1  ' N ' type adapter to connect to the RF synth a friend donated to me, so I can start working on it (needs complete recap, major undertaking from what he said.... he did warn me).
- x1 ' Y ' adapter, because I gather they are useful.... but they are quite pricey, so only one for now.
- x2 ' T 'adapters, must have....
- x3  straight female-female adapters, when you need to stick two cables together... They are cheap so I bought several...
- x1 Belling-Lee adapter for my old Metrix RF generator. This one has not yet arrived, they said at least 7 working days to have it in stock. So maybe I will get it in a couple weeks I guess.

Well I have a lot more, because a few years back I scored a huge bag of old coax adapters and bits and bobs for cheap. Thought I score big time, until I realized most of it is probably 75ohms not 50, because among the 150 pieces I got, there are about 30/40 75ohms terminators. So I assume all the adapters and sockets in the lot, are also 75 ohms, bummer     Would have to look at each of them one by one very closely to see if some of them by some chance are 50 ohms. Would be cool because from what I see it's old quality stuff, not modern Chinese junk.  A lot of it is Radiall for starters.

Then as for the cables, bought Green Paar  / TE / Tyco.

- x2 50cm ones
- x2 100cm ones
- x2 150cm ones

Might buy long 200cm ones one day, but so far I don't have enough TE on the shelves to actually need that long a cable.

So I think that should get me started for now. My wallet is on fire but I am so excited that lab V2.0 is now one more step closer to being truly operational / useful.
So cool to have proper equipment and just be able to grab the adapters and cables that you need.... what a luxurious lab that is ! 

[Robert763]

I did recently see a question about a vintage AC motor on a engineering forum.
It was single phase, brush and slip-ring connection to a wound rotor. The frame/stator was laminated but had no electrical connection.
Eventually worked out it was an inside out single phase induction motor. There was a start winding and centriiugal switch on the rotor and presumably copper bars in the stator.
The big question was WHY?  I think that given it's age it was to avoid patent infringement. Once patents expired that sort of arrangement died a natural death.

Edit, Spelling corrections. Im on the old laptop with dodgy keyboard
Edit two , damm  thank you Vince

[Vince]

Rob there is still some spelling to be fixed, have another round at it !

I see 4 more to correct, and I am not even a native so there might more that I don't even see ! 

[mnementh]

I know nothing of a Twike.

I know what a "twink" is is that's any help.     (Someone has to make up for arch-pervert BD139 not being around.)

psssst... I think yaoi is the in thing in that vein now.   

mnem
I'm no bd139...but I'll be as pervy as I think I can get away with in bd139's name.

[Vince]

@Rob : still see at least two you left out !   

- centrifugal

- it's instead of its

Yes I have nothing better to do !   

OK now will go and fix the typos in my own message above, don't want to be one of those do as I say not as I do ! 

[Cerebus]

Saw this I thought of you (all).

[Specmaster]

I did a bit more research.
An AC asyncronous induction motor will generate if the Slip is reversed, i.e. it's connected to a AC supply but is being turned faster than the syncronous speed for that supply frequency.
That is fine if it is putting a relatively small amount of power back into a power grid. To use for regeneration in a DC storage system is more interesting.
The Tesla S motor has a speed sensor disc on the shaft. I'm making assumptions here, but suggest that the controller uses the signal from this to generate a lower than current syncronous speed "excitiation" signal to the stator. Presumably this has a low amplitude and a lot of slip. Slip can be considered a phase shift between the excitiation and generated sinewaves. You can then use a syncronous (to rotor speed) rectifier to exract DC from the generated waveform without taking power from the excitiation. It seems 60 degrees of slip would be optimum for a 3 phase system.

So not as complex as I first thought but nowhere near as good a generator as a PM or "DC" rotor system.
Note car alternators are DC rotor systems and can be used as motors using BLDC type motor drives.

Yes, you may well be right on that point, because Tesla are no longer using that type of motor and are now using IPM-SynRM motors.

[Specmaster]

Rob there is still some spelling to be fixed, have another round at it !

I see 4 more to correct, and I am not even a native so there might more that I don't even see ! 

Be careful, you may invoke something that you wish you hadn't. Looking at some of your posts, you're not in a position to criticize anyone on that front. That said, given that it is not your native tongue, you do pretty well, and we can usually deduce your intended meaning. 

[Vince]

Spec, you forget one essential thing !   

The only reason I helped him with his spelling is because he mentionnd his will to correct it, whereas I never did ! 

All the natives here make lots of spelling errors, " it's " versus "its" or " there " instead of " their ", are the classics, but I don't care, I can still understand just fine !

You are allowed to complain about my typos only if like Rob I expressed a will to make my message perfect, which I never do !   

Usually I will re-read a message I post, and edit it to correct most typos... then read it again and find some more, edit again.... then think OK it's good now, only for someone later to reply to me and quote a snippet that.... still has some typo in it, that I did not see despite checking for typos 3 times in a row ! 

From what I see, in general 99% of my typos are not due to me not being native... rather it's always just me typing too fast on the keyboard, and not taking the time to proof-read before posting, because my messages are too long !   
I do have a tendency to forget whole words (because my hands can't type as fast as brain thinks) which make my sentences say the exact opposite of what I meant to convey... like say " can " instead of "can not "... which must be rather confusing to the reader, sorry about that .... 

[cyclin_al]

Beautiful creature, when I had a dog, there is no way on earth that she would have been in a punt, she would have been in the river, she really was a dog fish.

That looks like a canal. And while "wet dog" smells horrible, "wet dog from bathing in the canal" has all chances of smelling worse than horrible. For staying dry, I say "Good dog!".

It's the river Cam but not much better than a canal. Orli is no longer with us but she hated water. She tried one paw off the punt and withdrew quickly. She loved going out on a punt. She certainly surprised a few foreign tourists who started taking photos of her instead of the colleges.

In the early 80s I used to go kayaking in the Cam upstream of Cambridge.

Nice and peaceful, with one surprising benefit: after upending myself, my hayfever disappeared for a week.

I assume then that you had other symptoms much worse that masked the hayfever?   

[Specmaster]

Spec, you forget one essential thing !   

The only reason I helped him with his spelling is because he mentionnd his will to correct it, whereas I never did ! 

All the natives here make lots of spelling errors, " it's " versus "its" or " there " instead of " their ", are the classics, but I don't care, I can still understand just fine !

You are allowed to complain about my typos only if like Rob I expressed a will to make my message perfect, which I never do !   

Usually I will re-read a message I post, and edit it to correct most typos... then read it again and find some more, edit again.... then think OK it's good now, only for someone later to reply to me and quote a snippet that.... still has some typo in it, that I did not see despite checking for typos 3 times in a row ! 

From what I see, in general 99% of my typos are not due to me not being native... rather it's always just me typing too fast on the keyboard, and not taking the time to proof-read before posting, because my messages are too long !   
I do have a tendency to forget whole words (because my hands can't type as fast as brain thinks) which make my sentences say the exact opposite of what I meant to convey... like say " can " instead of "can not "... which must be rather confusing to the reader, sorry about that .... 

Yes, I also try to proofread and pick up as many mistakes as I can, but problem is, no matter how many times I do that, my brain will often automatically correct it for me in my head, so I think it reads right, but later discover that it doesn't because the brain plays tricks. The ideal is to get as many other people to read it first, if the missive is really important, that's what I do, but it is so impractical and also most people fully understand the message as their brains also tend to work in the same fashion, that I frequently don't do it.  That's one reason why you can regularly see at the bottom of my posts, the time and date that I last edited the post, which means that re-read it corrected some spelling, or inserted a missing word etc.

[mansaxel]

until I realized most of it is probably 75ohms not 50, because among the 150 pieces I got, there are about 30/40 75ohms terminators. So I assume all the adapters and sockets in the lot, are also 75 ohms, bummer     Would have to look at each of them one by one very closely to see if some of them by some chance are 50 ohms. Would be cool because from what I see it's old quality stuff, not modern Chinese junk.  A lot of it is Radiall for starters.

If the centre socket in the female has a cylinder of dielectric around it, it's a 50Ω. If it is just the bare socket, and looking rather fragile, it's 75Ω.

It used to be SOP in the video business (who are those that use 75Ω coax the most) to use 50Ω connectors with 75Ω cable, because the 50Ω is a bit sturdier. They had to stop that when the bandwidth had to increase to accommodate HD-TV, 720p and up.

[cyclin_al]

Those batteries I mentioned yesterday that failed to be delivered were delivered today by a postman in a van, who only came to my house and drove off again, it was the only Royal Mail delivery today in my street. So I'm guessing that Amazon have a special contract with them that prioritises Amazon deliveries. The package label was marked up as 24HR tracked, which in this case was a 48Hr delivery.

Does anyone know if there is a special agreement in place between or not?

It is highly likely that Amazon has special contracts with Canada Post (the equivalent to Royal Mail in the GWN).
Canada Post clearly indicates that they do not deliver on weekends.
However, I have received Amazon packages delivered by Canada Post even on a Sunday.

Note that I am located close to an Amazon delivery boundary.  Anything going to the rural side of the boundary is not delivered by Amazon, but is handed over to the mail service or a courier company.  The boundary appears to be fluid.  I guess that the boundary fluidity depends on how full and how close the Amazon delivery route is...

[cyclin_al]

Mmm.. your codes
alt-225 = ß    alt-230 = µ   alt-234 = Ω   alt-236 = ∞   alt-248 = °   alt-0216 = Ø don't work that way on my setup  , I get
alt-225 = ß    alt-230 = µ   alt-234 = Û   alt-236 = ý    alt-248 = °   alt-0216 = Ø   

Extended ASCII table from the Microsoft developers blog:   

Not sure, why you are getting different results.   Sometimes, a little trick helps: try a leading zero. alt-0236 instead of alt-236.

Nope, I then get completely differant results eg.

alt-234 = Ω   alt-236 = ∞
alt-234 = Û   alt-236 = ý
alt-0234 =ê   alt-0236 = ì

EDIT Looking at the extended ASCII table I seem to getting alt-0234 =ê (alt-136)  alt-0236 = ì (alt-141)

Probably your keyboard is a little nonstandard in the firmware; either a laptop keyboard or a short board that doesn't have a dedicated 10-key numeric pad, which full standard 104 key layout is what you need in order to be reasonably sure ALT codes work correctly.

I'm using a board with embedded 10-key right now on my laptop, and there's no way to make them work with it; I have to go find one of my posts and copy from it. But I had an old Toshiba back in my IRC daze which I could press both the FN and ALT keys, and then the embedded numeric keypad did in fact yield the correct characters.

mnem
 

It could be how the keyboard firmware is interpreting what to send for a particular key press.

However, Winbloze does the same thing!  It interprets what is coming from the keyboard and translates it to something else depending on the language and keyboard settings of the computer.
For work, I have a CMS keyboard (Canadian Multilingual Support), meaning the physical keybaord itself.  Winbloze automagically detects the CMS keyboard and creates a profile based on US English.  I have two additional profiles, without changing the hardware.  The second profile is French language with French Canadian keyboard (normal use profile).  The third profile is Canadian English language with US keyboard (this profile works for programming; the normal use profile is useless  (I see the pun and decide to leave it) for programming).

Keypresses tend to do random things, because Winbloze thinks it is smarter than me and changes the profile on its whim.    The alt codes do also change with the profile changes. 

[Vince]

Spec, you forget one essential thing !   

The only reason I helped him with his spelling is because he mentionnd his will to correct it, whereas I never did ! 

All the natives here make lots of spelling errors, " it's " versus "its" or " there " instead of " their ", are the classics, but I don't care, I can still understand just fine !

You are allowed to complain about my typos only if like Rob I expressed a will to make my message perfect, which I never do !   

Usually I will re-read a message I post, and edit it to correct most typos... then read it again and find some more, edit again.... then think OK it's good now, only for someone later to reply to me and quote a snippet that.... still has some typo in it, that I did not see despite checking for typos 3 times in a row ! 

From what I see, in general 99% of my typos are not due to me not being native... rather it's always just me typing too fast on the keyboard, and not taking the time to proof-read before posting, because my messages are too long !   
I do have a tendency to forget whole words (because my hands can't type as fast as brain thinks) which make my sentences say the exact opposite of what I meant to convey... like say " can " instead of "can not "... which must be rather confusing to the reader, sorry about that .... 

Yes, I also try to proofread and pick up as many mistakes as I can, but problem is, no matter how many times I do that, my brain will often automatically correct it for me in my head, so I think it reads right, but later discover that it doesn't because the brain plays tricks. The ideal is to get as many other people to read it first, if the missive is really important, that's what I do, but it is so impractical and also most people fully understand the message as their brains also tend to work in the same fashion, that I frequently don't do it.  That's one reason why you can regularly see at the bottom of my posts, the time and date that I last edited the post, which means that re-read it corrected some spelling, or inserted a missing word etc.

Yes same here, you can see most of my posts are "edited at ".... that does not mean there is any new content, but rather just typo fixing going on... if I do add new text / content I will do as everyone does and explicitly add " EDIT # " at the bottom to make it clear...

You are right brain auto corrects typos so you don't even see them weirdly... so  what I do on very long messages, is let a few minutes go by, so that the brain "forgets" a bit about the message I just typed and it starts afresh. It does work, I catch more typos this way but.... BUT the problem is that TEA is so fast moving that you rarely have the LUXURY of letting a few minutes go by.... because someone will already have replied to you in the meantime !     Of course he will quote your typos and you can't fix HIS quote... it's set in stone from there on ! 

[Specmaster]

Spec, you forget one essential thing !   

The only reason I helped him with his spelling is because he mentionnd his will to correct it, whereas I never did ! 

All the natives here make lots of spelling errors, " it's " versus "its" or " there " instead of " their ", are the classics, but I don't care, I can still understand just fine !

You are allowed to complain about my typos only if like Rob I expressed a will to make my message perfect, which I never do !   

Usually I will re-read a message I post, and edit it to correct most typos... then read it again and find some more, edit again.... then think OK it's good now, only for someone later to reply to me and quote a snippet that.... still has some typo in it, that I did not see despite checking for typos 3 times in a row ! 

From what I see, in general 99% of my typos are not due to me not being native... rather it's always just me typing too fast on the keyboard, and not taking the time to proof-read before posting, because my messages are too long !   
I do have a tendency to forget whole words (because my hands can't type as fast as brain thinks) which make my sentences say the exact opposite of what I meant to convey... like say " can " instead of "can not "... which must be rather confusing to the reader, sorry about that .... 

Yes, I also try to proofread and pick up as many mistakes as I can, but problem is, no matter how many times I do that, my brain will often automatically correct it for me in my head, so I think it reads right, but later discover that it doesn't because the brain plays tricks. The ideal is to get as many other people to read it first, if the missive is really important, that's what I do, but it is so impractical and also most people fully understand the message as their brains also tend to work in the same fashion, that I frequently don't do it.  That's one reason why you can regularly see at the bottom of my posts, the time and date that I last edited the post, which means that re-read it corrected some spelling, or inserted a missing word etc.

Yes same here, you can see most of my posts are "edited at ".... that does not mean there is any new content, but rather just typo fixing going on... if I do add new text / content I will do as everyone does and explicitly add " EDIT # " at the bottom to make it clear...

You are right brain auto corrects typos so you don't even see them weirdly... so  what I do on very long messages, is let a few minutes go by, so that the brain "forgets" a bit about the message I just typed and it starts afresh. It does work, I catch more typos this way but.... BUT the problem is that TEA is so fast moving that you rarely have the LUXURY of letting a few minutes go by.... because someone will already have replied to you in the meantime !     Of course he will quote your typos and you can't fix HIS quote... it's set in stone from there on ! 

Yes, and the other issue with letting a few minutes lapse before re-reading and posting is that the forum time window closes, and you find yourself locked out and thus unable to post. I have fallen into that trap many times.

[Vince]

until I realized most of it is probably 75ohms not 50, because among the 150 pieces I got, there are about 30/40 75ohms terminators. So I assume all the adapters and sockets in the lot, are also 75 ohms, bummer     Would have to look at each of them one by one very closely to see if some of them by some chance are 50 ohms. Would be cool because from what I see it's old quality stuff, not modern Chinese junk.  A lot of it is Radiall for starters.

If the center socket in the female has a cylinder of dielectric around it, it's a 50Ω. If it is just the bare socket, and looking rather fragile, it's 75Ω.

It used to be SOP in the video business (who are those that use 75Ω coax the most) to use 50Ω connectors with 75Ω cable, because the 50Ω is a bit sturdier. They had to stop that when the bandwidth had to increase to accommodate HD-TV, 720p and up.

OH !!! so you mean NO white dielectric piece AT ALL ?! 

Lemme see ! Found an article on Wikipedia on BNC plugs... a pic comparing 50 and 75 ohms... pic below.
Hell you are right, ZERO white dielectric piece in the center ! 

I don't understand... from a video a few years back from Shariar, IIRC he said the thickness of the white dielectric bit varied depending on the impedance of the plug/socket.
So I was paying attention to that when looking at the pile of adapters I have in that box.. and indeed noticed some pieces have a very thick white dielectric piece, same as the 50 ohms sockets on my scopes, whereas other pieces have a slightly thinner dielectric, and others have an even thinner, realllly thin dielectric. See picture below where I compare 3 pieces side by side : leftmost is one of the 50ohms adapters I just bought from Farnell. Then center, a 75ohms termination from Tektronix, one can clearly see the white dielectric bit is visibly thinner. Then rightmost, another termination, which is again clearly even thinner still ! Then I searched some more in the pile of bits and found a BNC socket like you describe, with zero white dielectric in the middle... which I photographed next to a 50ohms socket.

WORSE STILL : among the very 50 ohms bits I just ordered from Farnell (made TRIPLE sure when ordering, that it was all 50 ohms not 75...)... I now notice that they do NOT have all the same thickness white piece ! Most of them have a thick piece, but the " Y " adapter has a slightly thinner piece ! Oh no !
I am properly confused now, let me tell ya !!!!! 

What the hell is going on here ?! 

My understanding was as Shariar said that the dielectric thickness and nature/material used, determines the impedance of the connector or cable. so surely if the thickness of the white piece varies, so does the impedance no ?!    Also, if we have a varying thickness among 50ohms connectors... that means that depending on what particular plug you shove into a particular socket... you will end up with an air gap between the two white pieces, a gap whose size varies depending on the plug/socket combo that you happen to be using. Surely an air gap is not good ? Never mind one that you can't even know/control the size of ?!

Oh no.... I am real confused now people.... if I can't even get super basic stuff like this, straight, I will never go very far in my electronics adventures I fear ! 

Wiki article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BNC_connector at any rate confirms what you said... plus video stuff is your line of business or used to be at least as I understand it.... so clearly you know what a 75 ohm socket and plug looks like so I trust you ! 

So that would tend to say that if it has ANY thickness of white stuff, it's 50ohms for sure, I can trust that ? And that it's not important if you mix and match plugs/sockets that have a different thickness of the white stuff...weird but hey.

Wiki article says that 75ohms connectors are good for 2GHz and 50ohms for 4GHz.

Oh boy....


Well any way, if white = 50ohms, then I am lucky and all the stuff I got in that box is 50ohms not 75ohms, so I have hundreds of Euros worth of Radial adapters and sockets, great !!!!      Lots of nice panel mount sockets, some cool 90° angled adapters, Tees and much more.

[Vince]

OK it's even MORE confusing than that !


The pieces with the ultra thin white dielectric piece in my pics, be it the socket or the plug..... they have markings stamped on them.. they ARE 75 ohms ! Yet they do have white dielectric !

So, some 75 have zero white stuff, and others have a thin slice of it.... oh my goodness ...


The BNC plug / termination is stamped "75ohms" in the metal of the BNC, so no doubt here.

As for the socket, it's made by Radiall, there is a part number stamped on it as well : 142562 . Just looked it up on Google, it's still sold today ! You can even get the datasheet for it. It's 75 ohms also.

So....... to sum it up, unless proven wrong or better explained by one of you in a few moments :

- Thick white dielectric, or slightly less thick but still chunky =  50 ohms.
- No white dielectric AT ALL,..... or REALLY THIN dielectric = 75ohms.


My gut feeling is that the thicker the dielectric the higher the bandwidth. 75ohms bits that have a thin white piece is maybe an attempt to give them a slightly better performance than a regular piece ?

[Cerebus]

I used to be able to spell anything and everything correctly first time, every time. Similarly, the likelihood of me making grammatical mistakes in something was vanishingly small.

Meantime everything has moved online, and I'm reading stuff raw from every Tom, Dick and Harry. Twenty-five, thirty years ago I wouldn't have been reading Tom, Dick or Harry's raw output, I would have been reading things that had been filtered through secretaries with dictionaries, or sub-editors who took out the literals*, spelling mistakes, and cleaned up the grammar - possibly even sorted out stylistic issues.

A deluge of poorly spelled, ungrammatical, poorly written stuff has hammered at my pervious innate ability to look at something and see it was wrong. Nowadays if I let that instinct operate I can't read even a paragraph without my head hurting, so I have learned to turn it off or I'd end up copy-editing everything I read and reposting it cleaned up. A consequence of this is that my spelling, grammar and style have gone to pot too because the innate censor that would have fixed it is now in the 'off' position permanently. I used to pointedly keep spelling correction turned off, the squiggles suggesting purported spelling and grammar errors were distracting and more times wrong than not. Now, I pointedly turn it on because if I didn't I'd make an arse of myself in five minutes flat.

The whole effect is made even further worse by people who can't write without using huge long emphatic effects almost randomly in most of what they write. Surely it is possible to get one's point across with a little emphasis, only when it is necessary or helpful. Steven Rodda, a friend and colleague back in the day, posited the "PostScript Good Taste Virus". The idea was that this would infect PostScript printers, limit the output to no more than two faces on any page, and would restrict emphasis with bold or italics to a word or two every sentence ot two. We desperately need a similar virus in Javascript to infect people's browsers with.

* Literals - what everybody has taken to calling 'typos' aren't. They are not mistakes made by a typographer, but something that the original writer literally wrote. I used to have an editor who would make and remake this point every time a writer referred to their own literals as typos.

[DH7DN]

Spelling mistakes are distracting but I don't pay much attention to it. Our brains are able to adapt to typo errors otherwise communication would not be possible. When I read a technical document or a book, I mostly read carefully and pay attention. At this levels of my attention, I really don't want to get distracted by poorly written texts unless it's written in Chinglish - the Chinese English... Chinglish makes impossible possible.

I've been reading this "Poor grammar, poorly written" type of discussions on the Internet before and I surely will read it in the future. I don't think this is a real issue for everyone, just an issue for a certain type of people. Please don't 

[Cerebus]

Spelling mistakes are distracting but I don't pay much attention to it. Our brains are able to adapt to typo errors otherwise communication would not be possible. When I read a technical document or a book, I mostly read carefully and pay attention. At this levels of my attention, I really don't want to get distracted by poorly written texts unless it's written in Chinglish - the Chinese English... Chinglish makes impossible possible.

I've been reading this "Poor grammar, poorly written" type of discussions on the Internet before and I surely will read it in the future. I don't think this is a real issue for everyone, just an issue for a certain type of people. Please don't 

Ah. well, you miss my point. I'm not berating people for poor spelling, poor grammar et al. Those exist as a fact and there's nothing to be done about it, but you must note that I didn't say anything beyond that they are a fact. I'm saying what effect it has had on my now rapidly deteriorating spelling, grammar etc.

Now, I could start a tirade on people's poor level of comprehension and inability to read what's been clearly put in front of them... 

On the other hand, the creative formatters, the users of randomised punctuation, capitalisation, quotes, bold, underlining are going to be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. Well, at least the ones that are wilful rather than the result of needing psychiatric treatment. 

It is a standing joke that the letters to newspapers and other periodicals from nutters are written ALL IN CAPITALS IN GREEN INK. I can tell you from my personal experience of actually sitting, opening and reading the correspondence to periodicals that those kind of formatting quirks are pretty reliable indicators that the correspondent is going to be somewhere on the spectrum from "incoherent monomaniac" to "Erm, I think we'd better call the police". The quirk wasn't always ALL IN CAPITALS IN GREEN INK but it genuinely made up the higher proportion of crank letters than did other creative and unconventional approaches to formatting.

[DH7DN]

Spelling mistakes are distracting but I don't pay much attention to it. Our brains are able to adapt to typo errors otherwise communication would not be possible. When I read a technical document or a book, I mostly read carefully and pay attention. At this levels of my attention, I really don't want to get distracted by poorly written texts unless it's written in Chinglish - the Chinese English... Chinglish makes impossible possible.

I've been reading this "Poor grammar, poorly written" type of discussions on the Internet before and I surely will read it in the future. I don't think this is a real issue for everyone, just an issue for a certain type of people. Please don't 

Ah. well, you miss my point. I'm not berating people for poor spelling, poor grammar et al. Those exist as a fact and there's nothing to be done about it, but you must note that I didn't say anything beyond that they are a fact. I'm saying what effect it has had on my now rapidly deteriorating spelling, grammar etc.

Now, I could start a tirade on people's poor level of comprehension and inability to read what's been clearly put in front of them... 

On the other hand, the creative formatters, the users of randomised punctuation, capitalisation, quotes, bold, underlining are going to be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. Well, at least the ones that are wilful rather than the result of needing psychiatric treatment. 

It is a standing joke that the letters to newspapers and other periodicals from nutters are written ALL IN CAPITALS IN GREEN INK. I can tell you from my personal experience of actually sitting, opening and reading the correspondence to periodicals that those kind of formatting quirks are pretty reliable indicators that the correspondent is going to be somewhere on the spectrum from "incoherent monomaniac" to "Erm, I think we'd better call the police". The quirk wasn't always ALL IN CAPITALS IN GREEN INK but it genuinely made up the higher proportion of crank letters than did other creative and unconventional approaches to formatting.

Oh, you're correct. I misunderstood your point, thanks for your explanation. I apologise 

[mnementh]

meh. The world is in color; black and white are for people with no imagination. 

Seriously tho; most of the time I use color and bold to point out key concepts I'm trying to convey in a long post. If the concepts lead to each other, I try to point that out with the same color.

Other times I may be responding to multiple points; those I carefully color code this way. The way SMF handles quotes is ahem... difficult.

I understand that some folks find that distracting; if this were a more scholarly thread instead of the OT thread I might care. In response to the "unicorn barf" comments, I have tried to curb my tendency to emphasize jokes with comic sans, and try to keep to the more sedate shades. I think that's enough compromise.

Like all such channels of communication, this one doesn't convey tone very well as it is devoid of vocal inflection and body language. I use all the tools at my disposal to try and convey a positive tone and amicable disposition or humorous intent, (which really is me most of the time) and still misunderstandings are commonplace, with myself and others.

One very important thing many people forget when they try to communicate via any widespread medium is that unlike personal correspondence, there is very little shared history between reader and writer.

Like much of art, what is taken away is as much a matter of what the reader brings to the experience as what the writer brings.

Cheers,

mnem
This is where I usually put some pithy remark.